Page 12 of A Call to Home (Women of the Resistance #3)

Celebic

May 1943

Alix and Olga met outside the main hospital tent.

‘You look worried,’ Alix said.

‘I am. I’ve heard some very disturbing news from Vladimir. Apparently, there are reports that German troops are massing in a way that suggests a new offensive. They’ve broken the blockade on Foca and released a big group of Chetniks that we had bottled up there. Now there are reports of German units in the valleys of the Lim and the Tara. We are in danger of being surrounded.’ She stopped abruptly. ‘Listen!’

‘It sounds like gunfire.’ Alix gazed into the distance. ‘I can’t tell where it’s coming from but…’ she broke off as she heard a new sound, faint at first but quickly growing louder. ‘Aircraft! We should take cover.’

‘Take cover?’ Olga said with a grim laugh. ‘Where? A tent isn’t going to provide much shelter.’ She spoke with reason. The plateau was bare and open. The few houses clustered in little settlements nearby were mostly flimsy wooden structures.

The noise of the planes came closer and seconds later a flight of three Luftwaffe Dorniers swept overhead. Explosions rocked the plateau but the bombs fell some distance away.

‘I thought we had a truce!’ Alix exclaimed.

‘Not any longer,’ was Olga’s grim response.

One of the orderlies came running over. ‘Dr Kraus has called a meeting.’

Kraus was the commandant in charge of the hospitals. His face was grim. ‘We have received orders from the Supreme Council to concentrate all the most seriously wounded at the hospital at Rudine. Lighter cases are to be collected together here. It seems we have to be ready for a move, though in which direction I do not yet know.’

While preparations for the move were in progress, several units of the Seventh Division, whose job it had always been to protect the hospital, arrived and took charge of seven hundred recovering typhus cases. For a time, it seemed that the proposed evacuation was proceeding smoothly. Planes flew overhead but the sounds of battle were still distant. Then one of the hospitals, in the outlying village of Ham, was bombed.

‘We need to get the patients across the river,’ Kraus ordered. ‘They must go to Stjepan Polje on the far side, where they will be sheltered from the air by the cliffs and from there it should be possible to get back to Bosnia.’

Alix thought she had been in some grim situations in her life, but nothing compared with that day. The paths down into the canyon were narrow and steep, twisting this way and that above a sheer, vertiginous drop down to the Tara River, and the ground underfoot was treacherous, strewn with loose pebbles. To carry stretchers was impossible, so patients unable to walk were carried on the backs of those who were stronger. Alix was put in charge of half a dozen women who had all just recovered from serious injuries and as she coaxed them down the path she had to stop herself from looking down, knowing that if she did she might freeze with terror. From time to time, she heard a scream and a rattle of falling rocks and knew someone had slipped and fallen hundreds of feet into the gorge below.

By the time they reached the chosen resting place at Stjepan Polje, some of the patients were dead from exhaustion and exposure and others were at death’s door. All night Alix worked alongside the rest of the staff, replacing dressings, wrapping the weakest in what blankets they had managed to bring with them, trying to coax a flame from damp twigs to make Sumadije tea, the concoction of warm slivovitz that was the comforting drink most of them craved.

For three days and nights they huddled together in the shelter of the cliffs while aircraft of the Luftwaffe howled along the valley, dropping bombs. Then came news from the Supreme Council. After a long battle around Foca, the First Proletarian Division had been forced to withdraw. There was no way now to break through the encircling German forces to the east. With enemy battalions, both German and Italian, reinforced by elements of the Croatian Home Guard, pressing in from all sides the Partisans had been forced back onto the Piva plateau. When enemy troops appeared at the top of the cliffs above them on the left bank of the Tara the encirclement was complete. It was no longer possible to break through towards Bosnia. The only solution was to make the agonising climb back up the way they had come down.

The plateau was now crowded with men and women. Alix reached the top exhausted and desperately hungry. Food supplies at Stjepan Polje had run out the day before. When she had helped to settle the remaining patients as comfortably as possible under the circumstances, she was at last free to queue up where the cooks were doling out rations. When her turn came, she was given a cup of watery soup and a small piece of dry bread.

‘Make the most of it,’ she was told. ‘There’s no more where that came from.’

The Piva plateau was a barren, wind-swept expanse with no shelter from the merciless bombardment by the Luftwaffe. The few villagers who had not fled during the repeated battles were hostile and refused to part with any supplies. With access to the fertile valleys of the Sandjak cut off by the enemy there were no other sources of food. The situation was desperate.

A messenger arrived from Tito. He had established a temporary headquarters close to the Black Lake at the foot of Mount Durmitor, the massive peaks of which dominated the northern end of the plateau. Alix was ordered to go to him. She collected her few personal possessions, said an emotional goodbye to Olga, mounted a borrowed horse and set off with the messenger and the small escort that had come with him.

It was a long ride to where Tito and the other members of the council were encamped above the ruined town of Zabljak. By the time they got there Alix was swaying in the saddle with hunger and fatigue. Tito came to meet them and was just in time to catch her as she fell off.

‘My flame of the forest is almost extinguished! It needs fuel.’ He called to one of the women whose job it was to distribute the rations. ‘Bring some milk and some bread for this little one.’ He carried her to the fire that burned in the centre of the camp and set her down on a log that had been roughly carved into a seat. ‘It is good to have you back. And I have a special task for you.’

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘All in good time,’ he responded.

Alix drank the milk gratefully. The battalion kept a cow, like most others, and her milk was one of their most valuable assets. She had survived many moves and it was the special task of two young lads who had cared for their family herd before they joined the Partisans to see that she was given whatever provender was available.

The Supreme Council met.

‘There is only one way out of this,’ Tito said. ‘The Second Proletarian Brigade have taken control of the heights of Vucevo. We must break out in that direction and force a passage across the Sutjeska River.’

After some discussion Djilas said, ‘What about the Central Hospital? They are trapped on the Piva plateau. Kraus reports they have over a thousand walking wounded, more than five hundred who would have to be horsed and a hundred-plus stretcher cases.’

‘They will have to follow us,’ Tito said. ‘I’m putting you in charge of getting them out of there and bringing them to safety.’

The mood was gloomy. They all knew that they faced an almost impossible challenge. They were outnumbered and opposed by an enemy better equipped and much better fed than they were. Tempers were, understandably, short, and none more so that Zdenka’s. Tito had sent Herta away at the first sign of trouble and without the restraining influence of her rival Zdenka was intent on relieving all her fear and tension by railing at everyone from Tito down to the cooks.

For the first time she could remember Alix saw Milovan Djilas lose his temper.

‘Zdenka,’ he growled, ‘I swear if you do not curb your tongue I will take you by the hair and throw you into the lake.’

Tito called them together. ‘The British representatives we have asked for will be parachuted to us here in the next few days.’ He looked at Alix. ‘That is why I sent for you. You are part English. You will understand what they say to each other in their own language. You may pick up small details, mannerisms, expressions that would mean nothing to me. I don’t know if we can trust these men.’

Alix squirmed inwardly. It sounded as though she was being asked to spy on men who were, at least in part, her countrymen. She remembered something. ‘You trusted Major Hudson, I think.’

‘I was beginning to. Then he took himself off to rejoin Mihailovic and his crew. The British have always supported the Chetniks. I’m not convinced they have changed their attitude. But we shall see. You are my eyes and ears. At least their last signal said they were bringing medical supplies.’

‘Thank god for that,’ Djilas said. ‘But will they drop now, into the middle of a battle?’

Tito said, ‘I have sent a signal to Cairo, telling them that it is vital that their men arrive soon and warning that there is enemy activity in the region.’

‘They had better come soon, or they may find themselves dropping into the clutches of the Boches,’ Rankovic said gloomily.

Next morning Djilas rode out with an escort from the Seventh Battalion to collect the wounded. Alix watched him go with grave misgivings.

It seemed to her that he had been given an impossible task.